Verbing Weirds Language only if you're expecting it to work in a simple way. This is a special case of the more general truth that Language Weirds.

Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is in the wrong. There is no other time.

The church says Earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence in a shadow than the church.

If we can't find Heaven, there are always bluejays.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Turns out not to be so

I was catching up on The Mentalist, and caught the tag end of a The Good Wife episode. Some woman was telling Chris Noth's character that he should quit his campaign and be her running mate. She said she had plenty of her own money and she could afford to spend lots. "People are attracted to someone who's willing to spend their own money," she said.

Well, I have no idea how it's playing out on that show (despite liking the actors, I really disliked the first three or four episodes and haven't watched it since). But in real life we've seen just the opposite. Plenty of people ran this last time, and the time before, spending a lot of their own money (like Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman, and Linda McMahon, for example). And they weren't attractive enough to enough people.

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About Me

I used to teach Russian and Ukrainian, and some basic English, to civil servants. Now I teach Russian at a local continued-learning institute. I dabble in Gaelic and Welsh. I'm am amateur photographer and I love birding (in a small way). I'm a Progressive, and a Freethinker, and I know Evolution is a fact - that's FCD, Friend of Charles Darwin (look down the sidebar). I read a lot, and follow women's college basketball. Also I love astronomy, though I'm a rank amateur at it. Most of all, I like living in the reality-based community...

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You cannot leave. You cannot drop the armor now. Why? Because you are needed, more than ever. You are mandatory to keep the energy flowing, the karmic vibrator buzzing, to keep the progressive and lucid half of the nation breathing and healthy and awake and ever reaching out to the half that's wallowing in fear and violence and homophobia and sexual dread, hoping to find harmony instead of cacophony, common ground instead of civil war, some sort of a shared love of a country so messy and internationally disrespected and openly confused its own president can't even speak the language.

After all, you don't hand over all your children the first time the flying monkeys bang on your door...

It's far from over. The tunnel is just a little darker -- and longer -- than we imagined.
Mark Morford